1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo Concept

Around 1970, there appeared some concept cars that were extremely low and featured wedge-shape fronts.   Aside perhaps for racing purposes, those configurations had little practicality in the real motoring world.   I consider those designs being explorations of extreme cases -- something worth testing.  And for the sponsors and builders, those concept cars generated a lot a welcomed publicity.

Today's subject is the 1970 Ferrari 512S Modulo (brief Wikipedia entry here).  It was built by Pininfarina and styled by the firm's Paolo Martin.

Most of the images below appear to be via Pininfarina and/or Ferrari, though a few might be from other sources, as the Modulo was eventually sold by Pininfarina.

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The Modulo was painted black for the 1970 Geneva auto show.

Shortly later, colors were reversed.  The car appears to be highly streamlined, though I wonder if the design was thoroughly tested in a wind tunnel.  That's because the front lacks an air dam and seems like it might be subject to lift.

The engine is placed between the passenger compartment and the rear axle line.  Note the partly exposed upper part of the rear tire, this in part due to rear wheels being larger than the front wheels.

This frontal view indicates wedging was also applied to the car's sides as well as the front.

All-open view.

Publicity photo: the car seems to be painted silver here.

All-open again.  A publicity photo showing a woman at the wheel.

Same tall lady, here providing a sense of scale to the extremely low Modulo.  (The passenger compartment "door" is open.)

Pinin Farina's 1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale

A little-known concept car built by a leading Italian coachbulder for an American manufacturer was the 1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale. The coachbuilder was Pinin Farina, who had done other work for Nash earlier in the decade.

Most of the background regarding the Speciale can be found here. That article mentions:

"It's believed that, shortly after the May 1954 merging of Nash and Hudson that created the American Motors Company, Pinin Farina was tasked with designing and building a proposal for a 1955 or 1956 'senior' Nash....

"According to Pat [Foster]'s research, this Farina Ambassador 'appears to have been the second-to-last prototype Farina built for Nash/AMC,' with the Nash Palm Beach (later renamed Rambler Palm Beach) being the last. "To my knowledge," he continues, 'AMC never displayed the Farina 1955 Nash prototype in the U.S., though it did appear at the Turin Motor Show, just prior to being shipped to America.'"

Below are images of the Speciale along with photos of 1955 Nash Statesman examples (which had less elaborate two-tone paint schemes that year than Nash Ambassadors and also a shorter wheelbase).

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1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale - Pinin Farina photo
Farina's design is more attractive than that of 1955 Nashes.  I wonder if it would have been successful in the market if it had entered production.  After all, American styling fashion called for elaborate two-tone and even three-tone paint schemes that year.

1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale - image via Hemmings

1955 Nash Statesman - RM Sotheby's auction photo
Farina used a similar grille frame- headlight assembly scheme, and the general fender line and C-pillar features.

1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale

1955 Nash Statesman - for sale photo
The production Nash had a larger, more practical trunk.

1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale
Tail lights are unrelated to the production version.

1955 Nash Statesman - for sale photo

1955 Nash Ambassador Speciale

1955 Nash Statesman - image via Hemmings

Some Styling Models of Ferraris

In May I was in Italy with a tour group, but my agenda differed from theirs in that my real goal was to visit three automobile museums.  However, on a Sunday -- a day when much of the country is closed -- the tour included a brief visit to the Ferrari museum in Maranello.  Like the other museums, the Ferrari had a few styling models on display.  Those are the subject of this post.

All the models I saw in the various museums were small, 1/10 actual size and even smaller.  I suppose their main purpose was to indicate actual proportions, something easily distorted in a stylist's rendering.  For mass-production cars, a full-size model was essential for evaluation.  But limited-production or even one-off designs could not be economically justified by that extra effort.

Note that one of the models pictured below was used for aerodynamic testing.  The purpose was to gain a sense of airflow on various parts of the body.  Determining the potential drag coefficient might not have been a primary task due to the difference in scale between the model and an actual car.

Click on images to enlarge (and for reading the museum's captions for the models).

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Model of 1948 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta by Touring (background here).

1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta, Touring Superleggeria.

Two models: first, regarding the one to the right in the photo.

The caption states that it's from 1966 by Pininfarina and of the Ferrari Dino 206 GT.

Publicity photo of the Dino 206 GT prototype.

A 1967 Ferrari Dino 206 GT.  Both examples lack the blended headlights seen on the model.

Caption for the model at the left of the reference photo: 1968 Pininfarina design P6.

Ferrari P6 concept model by Pininfarina. This was a engineless "pushmobile" that was exhibited, but did not directly see production.  This model was used for aerodynamic testing.

Photos of the Ferrari Pininfarina P6.

Austin A90 Atlantic Design Source Puzzle

Since I wasn't there to experience it, my knowledge of post- World War 2 English cars is not as good as it might be.  Which is why I hope some readers will pitch in regarding whether or not there was a "missing link" in the inspiration of the design of the Austin A90 Atlantic.

The Wikipedia entry cited above states (as of January 2019):

"The Atlantic was one of the first post-war cars engineered from scratch by Austin, and was said to be styled from a thumbnail sketch by Leonard Lord, then Chairman of Austin and later the British Motor Corporation (BMC) — though in truth the styling was more likely the work of resident Argentinian Austin stylist Dick Burzi. The car was almost certainly influenced by a 1946 Pininfarina-bodied Alfa Romeo cabriolet, which just happened to end up at the Longbridge factory in mid-1947, a few months before the light blue 16 hp sports prototype made its first appearance in the experimental department and on nearby roads around the factory."

As for that Pinin Farina design, this link states:

"Ordered new by a wealthy lady from Milan, Giuliana Tortolli-Cuccioli, this car was bodied by Pinin Farina in 1946, on the base of one of the 14 Alfa Romeo chassis delivered to the coachbuilder in 1942...

"It was sold during 1948 to Leonard Lord, the Chairman of Austin, and became an inspiration for the Austin A90 Atlantic, before being used personally by the Managing Director, George Harriman. And it was then that an exciting new chapter in the car's life began. Holden Koto was a young designer collaborating with Raymond Loewy, who had offices in Paris, New York and London. In the early 1950s, Loewy signed a contract with British Leyland to design the new Austin Seven, and Holden Koto was sent to work at Austin for four months. While there, he expressed his huge admiration for the Alfa Romeo, and George Harriman ended by selling it to him, well below its value, as a bonus. Koto used the car for the next 12 months before taking it back to America with him."

One link has the Alfa turning up at Longbridge in mid-1947, the other gives 1948 as the date it was acquired by Lord.  Wikipedia says the dates of the 1948 Earls Court Motor Show were 27 October – 6 November.  Given the time to develop a production car body in those days, the 1947 date seems more likely.  But if Lord bought the car in 1948, it's unlikely that it inspired A90 Atlantic styling -- despite claims from some Internet sources including the first Wikipedia link above.

Also introduced at the '48 Earls Court show was the Daimler DE-36 Drophead Coupe by Hooper called the "Green Godess" by some.  Bonhams auction house states:

"The building and subsequent sorting out of the Daimler Green Goddess is well documented in surviving Daimler and Hooper & Co. Ltd. records. They show that just after New Year's 1948, Hooper body no. 9352 was commissioned, to be built to the coachbuilder's design no. 8183. Daimler DE36 chassis no. 51233, onto which the body for “the Chairman's car” would be mounted, was received by Hooper's on June 7, 1948. Osmund F. Rivers, Hooper's chief designer, was responsible for completing the car for Earls Court. During the final weeks of assembly, 24-hour departmental commitments were required to complete the car for the October 27 opening."

A related design, first appearing on a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith chassis, as mentioned here:

"This beautiful Hooper bodied Saloon is a one off car with a very interesting history. In 1948, the chief designer for Hooper, Osmond Rivers, was commissioned by Hooper to design a "new look" to get away from the classic designs which had continued after World War II. He produced seven bodies. Once [sic] of which was shown at Earl's Court Motorshow in 1948. Fearing the car would not be well received because it was as he called it "rotund" Hooper asked for a more "razor edged" design. The result was design number 8234 on job number 9568 on chassis number WGC16. No other body was made just like it. It received great acclaim as a Motorshow One Off Prototype that influenced many designs to come. "

That is all the background I could find.  Now for some images to continue the tale.

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1950 Austin Atlantic Drophead Coupe - auction photo.  The design includes a centrally-mounted auxiliary light similar to that of the 1948 Tucker.  Borrowed from contemporary Pontiacs are "silver streaks on the bonnet and boot (hood and trunk).

Same car seen from rear quarter.  The true subject of this post is the feature of the front fender fading downwards to nearly the car's rear, combined with the lack of a distinct rear fender.  This style theme was in place at Austin months before the A90 Atlantic debuted in October 1948.

1952 Austin A90 Atlantic Sports Saloon - auction photo showing a coupé version.

1946 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 Cabriolet Speziale by Pinin Farina - auction photo.  This was supposedly the inspiration for A90 Atlantic styling.  A case might be made that the extreme aft designs are similar, but the swept front fender feature is absent here.  Clearly this Pinin Farina design had minimal influence on the Austin.

1948 Daimler DE-36 "Green Godess" Drophead Coupé Earls Court show car, body by Hooper, photo via Bonhams.  On the other hand, this first example of Hooper's "Empress" fender style was first shown at the same time as the A90 Atlantic.  The fender theme is essentially identical.  Were the two designs one of those interesting cases of simultaneous inspiration?  Or was there another similar design from around 1946-47 that inspired them both?  Let us know in comments if there was one.

1949 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith saloon by Hooper, for sale.  This was the "Empress" saloon that appeared at the 1949 Earls Court show.  Hooper built many variations on this theme over the following decade on Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Daimler chassis.

Book Reviews: Pininfarina and Touring

The Italian publishing house Giorgio Nada Editore not long ago launched a series of books about some of the country's most famous carrozziari.  I happened to stumble across one about Touring while browsing a Feltrinelli bookstore in Rome a few months ago.  Upon my return home I ordered one about Pininfarina.  My reaction to these is the subject of this post.

Cover designs and links to Amazon:

Pininfarina: Masterpieces of Style

Touring: Masterpieces of Style
Amazon cites Luciano Greggio as the author of both books, though on the books' information pages he is listed as "Texts edited by" -- whatever that might mean.

I bought the books because I wanted reference material on Italian coachbuilders, especially their work from the mid-1920s to 1965 or thereabouts, a period that interests me greatly.  I was very pleased with the Touring book because that firm was active from 1926 to 1966, almost exactly hitting my time criterion.  (The name was resurrected in recent years, but that firm's work is not covered in the book.)  It is an excellent research tool for my purposes.

The Pininfarina book is another matter, partly because the firm has been active since 1930, nearly 90 years, requiring a similar-sized book to deal with a greater time span.  I did find the pre-1965 material useful, and the information regarding more recent designs should also be helpful researching material for this blog.

One disappointment with the Pininfarina book was that its text struck me as being more like an extended press release than a scholarly presentation.  Here are two examples.

1984 Ferrari Testarossa
Text on page 148 includes the following:

"The second [1984] event instead concerned the presentation of the Testarossa berlinetta, unveiled in October 1984 by Sergio Pininfarina himself in the glamorous setting of the Paris Lido; this was a car with an extraordinary presence and stood out above all for the conspicuous slatted lateral air intakes in a softly rounded composition rich in aerodynamic appendages and the fruit of highly sophisticated research."

Not factually wrong, but there is a real public relations feel to it that I found annoying.

1995 Honda Argento Vivo
Part of the book's caption (page 177) for this photo reads:

"The Argento Vivo from 1995, an authentic star in terms of research and materials used, the car was born out [of] an emotive and technological research project by Pininfarina in collaboration with Honda...."

This is rather gushy, but care was taken not to say that the car was attractive -- I consider it something of a mess, styling-wise.

One serious (for me) defect in both books was that the actual stylists of the cars presented were not mentioned or at best only hinted at.

Also available at present is a book about Zagato that I am considering buying.  Forthcoming are books about Bertone, Ghia and Vignale.

Simca's Huit-Sport

French carmaker Simca began in 1934 as a branch operation of Fiat, the major Italian transportation conglomerate (historical Simca profile here).  An important model was the Simca 8, produced 1937-51, with a time-out during World War 2.

A sporty version of the 8 was revealed at the 1948 Salon de l'automobile.  It was a convertible coupé designed by Pinin Farina, fabricated (according to some sources) by Stabilimenti Farina, and based on the Simca 8 chassis.  A license was obtained from the design firm, and subsequent bodies were built in France by Facel-Metallon with market introduction early in 1950.  A coupé version was displayed at the October 1949 Salon.  It too entered limited production, and two examples competed in the 1950 Monte Carlo Rally.

The 8-Sport was given a literal facelift in in the form of a redesigned grille by the time of the 1951 Salon.  During 1952, the Simca 8 platform was replaced by that of the new Simca Aronde passenger car.  The name was changed to 9-Sport, and some minor changes were introduced, the most visible being the addition of bumper guards.

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An early convertible version.

The coupé.  If you look closely, you will see that the rear window (backlight, in styling jargon) is a three-piece affair.  This was common practice around 1950 because glassmakers were still researching how to manufacture large panoramic windows.

This is the facelifted version.  Some purists might object to the heavy, perhaps American-inspired chromed grille bars.  But the result is a simplification that might appeal to other observers.   I have no preference.  Either way, the design of the 8-Sport is virtually beyond criticism.

Design Classic: Cisitalia 202

The Cisitalia 202 coupé is generally acknowledged as one of the automobile design greats.  In part, this was because it was one of only eight vehicles honored in a 1951 exhibit at New York's prestigious Museum of Modern Art.  A PDF file of MoMA's press release for the exhibit is here.   Current MoMA collection Web site items regarding the Cisitalia are here and here.

As for the Cisitalia firm, its Wikipedia entry is here and a Web site devoted to it can be found here.

The Cisitalia 202 was designed in 1946 by Battista "Pinin" Farina, head of the Pininfarina coachbuilding firm.  Many observers think that the Cisitalia was his most significant design, because it set the scene for the torrent of outstanding Italian designs in the late 1940s and through the 1950s.  Let's take a look.

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These color images are of a well-preserved or restored Cisitalia 202.  They might be copyrighted, but since they appear on a number of Web sites without attribution, I can only offer a general acknowledgement to the copyright holder, if there is one.

Here are two photos probably taken around the time this car was built.

The main functional defect of the design seems to be the lack of a trunk lid.  Perhaps that's because the car had a very small area available for storage.  At the rear, there is what appears to be an access panel for a spare tire.

The car's proportions are driven by the engineering package.  The hood is fairly long, but that doesn't matter because the car is pretty small.  The steering wheel is placed at about the midpoint of the length of the car, so the driver's head is a short ways aft of center.  The overall concept features an integral, "envelope" body.  However, it is not a bland blob because the front and rear fenders are still somewhat distinct, adding interest.  Allowing the rear fender its own shape relieves what might otherwise have been a slab-sided look such as can be seen on contemporaneous designs such as the 1947 Kaiser.  The 1947 Studebaker also retained a distinct rear fender for the same reason.

The basic body design of this 1948 Oldsmobile 98 was probably nearly set around the time the Cisitalia 202 first appeared in 1947 (trim details were finalized a little later).  This means that its appearance was not influenced by the Cisitalia.  It too has clean looks and a distinct rear fender behind a flow-through front fender.  So Farina's Cisitalia was actually in line with the styling zeitgeist of the postwar 1940s.

Besides its good proportions and carefully stated details, Farina did make one bold move: he dropped the hood to near fender-level, a featured picked up by many later designs.  Here too there was precedent in certain prewar racing cars.  So while Farina was not innovative on the Cisitalia, it was his outstanding design ability that allowed him to pull the various features into one place in an extremely tasteful manner.

What Were They Thinking?: 1950s Concepts' Impractical Wheelwells

Automobile Styling is more fashion-driven than some stylists care to admit.  Then there are styling fads, which for the purposes of this post I mean very short bursts of a certain feature.  One such fad in the mid-1950s had to do with impractical wheel wells.  And it was limited to what are now called concept cars.

Several concept cars were involved, and I'll deal with four instances.  The first is the 1954 General Motors Motorama show car Buick Wildcat II (link here).  The next two were shown at the 1955 edition of Motorama (an elaborate traveling show featuring General Motors' production and concept cars).  They were the Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight Delta (I have no decent link for it) and the Pontiac Strato-Star (link here).  In those days, most of the best-known GM concept cars were what were called "blue sky" projects -- styling for its own sake and for corporate publicity purposes, rather than the thinly-disguised near-future production show cars that are so common nowadays -- though such cars might have a few features being considered for future production.

The final example is the 1956 Pininfarina Superflow I, built on a used Alfa Romeo 6C 3500 chassis.  This link states that four different Superflow bodies were created on that same chassis as some kind of experiment by the coachbuilding firm.  Only the first of the set had an unusual wheelwell treatment.

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1954 Buick Wildcat II concept
The Wildcat looks like it was a modified Chevrolet Corvette sports car.  I base this conjecture on the shape of the windshield and cockpit area as well as the general dimensions of the car.  The front fenders and the freestanding headlamps are a throwback to cars of the early 1930s and before.  The two-level treatment of the front bumper recalls the 1934 LaSalle bumper.  Spotlights on either side of the windshield were also found on some 1930 vintage cars.

All this is fine for a show car; the retro features become a fine topic for conversation.  But those nice, polished wheelwell interiors would soon become covered in road grime from daily driving, so open fenders were probably never seriously considered as a future production possibility.

1955 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight Delta concept
Apparently the concept of large front wheelwell openings became a fad at GM's styling center because something similar was used the following year.  The main difference is that the 1955 versions were closed at the front, thereby eliminating the retro look on the Wildcat.  Note that the rear wheelwells are also somewhat larger than usual.

1955 Pontiac Strato-Star concept
The Strato-Star's front wheelwells closely resemble those on the Eighty-Eight Delta.  Both sets of wheelwells are nicely finished and would be prone to becoming covered with road grime.  What car owner would enjoy trying to clean off the mud, tar, and other materials that might gather there?

1956 Pininfarina Superflow I - Alfa Romeo 6C 3500
Another year, another impractical wheelwell treatment.  I have no proof, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Pinin Farina and his team became wheelwell-conscious thanks to those GM show cars.  In the case of the Superflow I, the front wheelwells are not elongated; instead, they have no tops.  Well, there are tops, but they are in the form of translucent plastic fastened over the basic car body, taking the place of what normally would be an enclosed metal fender.  Note the bullet-shaped headlamp housings -- something from the 1930s á la the Wildcat II.

Yet again, road grime and chips from gravel would doom this concept for practical production cars.